


under brick and mortar we lie

by Indipindy16



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Living Together, Medicine, Minor Injuries, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protective Diego Hargreeves, Protective Klaus Hargreeves, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Serious Injuries, Vanya Hargreeves Deserves Better, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, five is the stupidest genius ever, these babies don't know how to handle trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22071592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indipindy16/pseuds/Indipindy16
Summary: It was the end of the world, and Five wasn't strong enough to take them back in time. Luckily, good ol' Reggie Hargreeves was paranoid as could be, and the siblings manage to get to the bunker he built under the Academy. They survive the apocalypse, but can they stick around long enough for Five to heal and take them back in time to fix the whole mess?Or they might just kill each other. After spending their whole adult lives as far apart as possible, being confined to a tiny bunker with limited supplies is not ideal.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Diego Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 31
Kudos: 233
Collections: The Umbrella Academy





	1. don't look at me with those eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I have a pretty good idea how it'll go from here, but any suggestions are appreciated!
> 
> Chapter title is from 'A Sadness Runs Through Him' by The Hoosiers

The world was ending and he had no fucking clue what to do, so Diego turned to the only 58-year-old 13-year-old in the room. At which point Five promptly collapsed.

Diego quickly caught him and pulled one limp arm to hang around his shoulder, the other hand pressing on the bullet wound in his abdomen that had opened back up in the fight. He wasn’t surprised when it came back bloody.

“I’m fine, I just have to, just,” Five was muttering, trying to stand up by himself. It was useless, because no way was Diego going to let him when he knew first-hand just how badly a bullet in the gut messed up your coordination, from before he’d learned to wear a bullet-proof vest in his vigilante outings.

“Does anyone know what we’re supposed to do now?” Klaus was the first who spoke up. He was still watching the moon crumbling, almost in a daze. 

“There’s a bunker.”

All eyes - even Klaus’s - turned to Luther, surprised.

“What do you mean? Where?” Diego asked. Typical of Luther to be fucking vague and play the hero when they really didn’t have much time. Allison was scribbling furiously in her notebook.

“Under the academy - Dad built a bunker, he showed it to me. We could run there.”

“We won’t get there in time, it’s across the city.“

_Could 5 zap us there?_ Allison held up her note for them to see, nervously looking at Five. 

“I could try,” Five raised his head, “I can’t take everyone at once though. I’d need two jumps.”

“We don’t have time-“ Diego repeated his earlier point, more adamantly.

“We certainly won’t if we don’t start now!” Five glared up at him, “I can’t take you back in time to fix it, It’s too dangerous right now. My body can’t handle the strain of redistributing all of our particles through time accurately.” If Five was willing to admit his shortcomings, Diego knew they really had no options. He grimaced.

They were all looking at him. Diego met Luther’s eyes. He didn’t seem to have any argument. Maybe he’d given up as much as Klaus, who was stood next to Allison, fumbling with his dog tags and watching Diego with hopelessness. Allison looked determined, challenging him to disagree with the plan she and Five had come up with. Vanya was completely out of it, hanging limply in Luther’s arms. When Diego looked back down at Five, he saw his brother watching him intently. He didn’t understand what the hell that meant. They looked at each other for a moment more, Diego realising that even if they came up with something different that’d waste precious time.

He nodded. 

“I’ll be back in a couple seconds.” Five told Allison and Klaus. And, presumably, Ben.

Five reached out with his free arm to grab Luther, who was holding Vanya, and suddenly they were all gone.

In the rubble of the Academy, Five immediately detached himself from Diego, swaying on his feet, before he had jumped back to the theatre. Diego looked to Luther, who was already rushing to the other side of the debris-littered courtyard. 

Luther delicately (as much as a monkey man can be delicate, Diego thought) placed down Vanya on a stray set of collapsed bricks before getting to work hurriedly shoving the mess off a strange panel on the ground that Diego had seen before, but had assumed was some tiling pattern that Reginald had chosen to make the courtyard less depressingly dull.

He quickly got down to help his brother, but he didn’t really need to because it was already almost done. In a moment the space was cleared. Diego picked Vanya back up, hiking her over his shoulder, while Luther frantically felt around the edges for whatever the opening mechanism was. 

Finally the bunker opened and Luther jumped in with a thump, holding his hands out for Diego to lower down Vanya’s limp body. Diego hadn't really considered before how light and tiny she was. Seeing her in Luther’s arms was strange, like she was still a kid and had never really grown up. He felt like that sometimes.

Diego spared a glance over his shoulder, spotting Allison and Klaus hurrying towards them, Five being supported by an arm around Klaus’s neck. Diego could see that blood was still seeping into his shirt. 

A glance at the sky told him that they really didn't have much time, if any, as several giant chunks of the moon - the fucking moon, out of everything he’d experienced this was right up there as one of the most surreal - were getting larger as they got closer. Another glance at Five’s eyes told him that he knew it as well, and Diego knew that he was an arrogant ass but also stupidly self-sacrificial, and he could already see his brother deciding to do something stupid.

Sure enough, he did.

Five untangled himself from Klaus and pushed him forwards, shouting something Diego didn’t catch - they were a good ten paces behind Allison, who was almost at the bunker already. Klaus of course (he was stupidly self-sacrificial as well, probably even more than Five) had turned back around and was arguing with him, and Diego’s first thought was _we don’t have time for this shit_ before he was already racing towards them.

He went straight past Klaus and before even giving him time to comment, darted one hand around Five’s waist - he couldn't be gentle with the gunshot wound and he knew it would be really painful, but it was Five’s fault for being a stubborn idiot - and hauling him up over his shoulder.

Being physically only 13, Five was light enough to run while carrying, making them much faster than when Klaus had been trying to hobble along with him. Five was shouting something along the lines of _you don’t have time, leave me_ that Diego filtered out because he knew Five had gone crazy all those years in the apocalypse but this was on another level of stupid _._ Diego roughly grabbed Klaus’s shoulder with his free hand and dragged him the last stretch, hauling him back up each time that he clumsily stumbled on all the debris.

When they reached the hatch, Allison had already descended, and Klaus quickly clambered down the rusty ladder as well. Luther was ready and waiting to receive Five, who Diego handed down to him despite resistance (“I am not some kind of delicate flower, you protozoan-“) before Diego ducked inside. He pulled the incredibly heavy hatch firmly shut with him, with less than a second to go before he heard a deafening impact and the whole world shook. 

As he fell the 7 feet down into the bunker, he watched the world almost in slow motion.

For a moment he was there, suspended, not quite sure if the world ending meant his life ending, meant that the bunker wouldn't be strong enough and they’d all die, that the apocalypse would come and the only person to witness the ‘after’ would be little 13-year-old (physically and mentally) Five, high on the magic of time travelling for the first time before it all went wrong and he was all alone in a world of death and despair -

-

-

and then he was moving again.

Diego didn't land quite right. 

It was an understatement, he broke his right ankle and fibula, but it was a hell of a lot better than being dead. He buckled his knees in the fall and went over backwards, his head hitting the stone floor, not hard enough the break it open but enough to give him a really shitty headache when he woke up later.


	2. time takes its toll on him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: KINDA GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF TREATING INJURIES  
> eg. gunshot wounds and broken bones, medical stitching
> 
> Chapter title is from 'Runs In the Family' by Amanda Palmer

Klaus was leaning against the wall next to Diego, who was still unconscious. Ben was on his other side, trying to talk to Klaus, but he wasn't listening. He was looking around.

He hadn’t had time to take in his surroundings when he’d originally come in as fast as possible, panicked in the heat of the moment. And after that, when the world had properly ended and Diego had hit his head, Klaus had been the only one with his hands free. So he had to drag his brother to the nearest upright surface and he'd propped him up so that he could stretch out the clearly broken leg. 

Klaus had never been the best at field medicine in Vietnam, having missed most of the training of a typical soldier, but occasionally helping out the medic taught him enough to know that the crack when Diego had landed didn’t mean anything good for his right leg. However, his hands were shaking too much and he didn’t trust himself to re-set the leg until Diego was awake again. He’d already been out several minutes, but Klaus didn’t think the fall had been enough to put him out longer than half an hour, since most of the impact had been taken by his legs.

Klaus’s initial thought, when he looked up from Diego to the rest of the bunker, was _wow, this place is small._ Then he saw a small passageway across from him that, he hoped, led to more, and decided that the room was alright enough. 

It was designed like 50s-era living room slash kitchen, with a yellow patterned couch on one side where Allison sat with Vanya’s head in her lap and a set of avocado-green cupboards and matching surfaces on the other. The walls were plastered with garish patterned wallpaper that even Dave, who had grown up with that kind of thing, would probably have had a little chuckle about. A retro radio sat on the spotless island in the middle, which Luther shoved off to lay down Five's injured body. 

Klaus watched as Five groaned in pain at the movement, clutching his gut. He made a half-aborted attempt to sit up, laying back down when Luther put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into a resting position.

“You should help them,” Ben muttered helpfully next to Klaus, “You’ve dealt with wounds before, right? You said so.”

Well. He really had helped out a couple medics in his first few days, before Dave had taught him how to use a gun properly (ol’ Reggie didn’t like guns so he’d never used one before), but he’d kind of exaggerated his involvement when he’d spoken to Ben about it later. But he knew the basics of first aid, which seemed to be more than Luther, who was looking at Ben like he was a bomb that was about to go off.

So Klaus gently removed Diego’s head from his shoulder where it had been resting and went to help. 

“Alright, Space Boy,” he began, earning a glare for the nickname, “D’you know where Reggie kept the first aid supplies?”

“I’m fine,” Five mumbled weakly, clearly not fine. They both ignored him.

“I’m not sure. I’ll find them.” 

While Luther started searching the avocado cupboards, Klaus went to work lifting Five’s shirt and revealing the injury. It was a gunshot wound, but Klaus didn’t remember seeing anyone getting hit in the gunfight. Then he had a recollection of Grace treating Five a couple days ago, and when he saw the remains of broken stitching around the wound he realised that it must’ve just been re-opened in the commotion and the stitches had somehow ripped. He made sure to apply extra pressure, but the bleeding seemed to be slowing down already.

When he looked up again, Luther was holding an open first aid box expectantly. Klaus reached in and took some tweezers, getting to work delicately removing the old stitching, trying not to cause Five too much pain.

“Do you even know what you’re doing?” Luther asked accusingly.

Klaus glanced up for a moment to give him a toothy grin, “I sure hope so.”

When he looked back down and focused on the wound, Klaus saw Luther in the corner of his eye turn round helplessly to Allison for backup. She didn’t seem to be paying much attention though, delicately and methodically stroking Vanya’s hair, who was still out cold and couldn’t possibly feel it. It was the thought that counted, though, Klaus supposed.

Once all the old stitching was gone, he ruffled through the box again in search of some fresh stitching. He also found some forceps and a tiny pair of needle-holders. The medical equipment was all modern and looked sterilised, the only items in the room that weren’t themed around the 50s or 60s. _They didn’t have these in ‘Nam._

“Klaus, you’ve got to clean the wound first.” Ben reminded him.

“Oh, shit, yeah.” Klaus giggled nervously. He spotted a pack of antibacterial wipes which he opened and cleaned Five’s injury with. Five hissed at the pain. Klaus opened the pack of stitching thread, which came with a handy needle on the end, and looked up at Five’s face.

“Right, uh - Five, this is gonna hurt a lot.”

“More than it already does?” he responded, gritting his teeth.

“More than waxing your ass with pudding, I can tell you.”

“Shut up, Klaus.” Luther growled.

“Just saying! Righty-o, let’s get this wound stitched right up. I’ll even give you a Spiderman plaster and a lollipop after if you’re a good boy.” Without another word, he held the skin with the forceps and started stitching. 

It took a couple nerve-wracking minutes, his hands shaking more with each stitch, but Ben was saying encouraging words(“Just a couple more Klaus, you’re almost done. Five’s counting on you.”), and after a few deep breaths with a sprinkling of swearing both from him and Five, who was trying to seem tough but who was clearly struggling with the pain, Klaus tied the final stitch and finished it off with a padded bandage.

And just like that, he was done.

And, _just_ like that, the tension that had been keeping him upright evaporated, and Klaus had to lean heavily on the kitchen island that had been a make-shift operating table to keep standing. His hands were covered in Five’s blood.He gave himself a moment to recover before he glanced up at Luther, who was watching him in what looked like awe.

“Is there running water?” He cringed at how hoarse his voice sounded.

Luther’s response was a sharp nod, and he reached up to point at something behind Klaus. He turned around and sure enough, when he turned around there was a sink.

“That’s not possible, the water lines are all destroyed.” Five spoke up.

“When Dad showed me, he said that it came from a separate water tank that he had stored up.”

Klaus twisted the handle with a blue rim and sure enough cold water cascaded onto his hands, washing the bright red blood down the drain. 

“Well, it works! I’ll have to thank Daddy when I next conjure him, for giving us a wonderful banker that he conveniently forgot to mention except to his very favourite Number One.” He voice was laced with faux-sweetness and sarcasm.

“I was the only one who was here,” Luther bit out angrily. 

“And why is that? I guess I got tired of Reggie shoving me in a mausoleum full of screaming ghosts for hours on end and calling it _good parenting._ ” 

“He was training us!“

“Whole lot of good it did, huh?” Five grumbled, and when Klaus turned around, waving his hands in the air to try and dry them, he saw the moron (he was the cleverest of all of them, except maybe Ben, but he seemed to have become a bit of an idiot after all those years alone in the apocalypse, Klaus thought) trying to get up.

“Oh no you don’t!” He rushed forwards to push Five back down.

“I have to-“

“You have to rest, and get to full strength, then take us back in time so I can punch Dad in the face and kick Harold Jenkins in the nuts.”

“I have to do the equations and figure out how first!”

Luther seemed to be on Klaus’s side for once, and he stepped in saying, “It looks like we have supplies enough for a few months at least, you have time to rest. It’s not exactly eight days any more.”

At which point Allison joined the conversation as well. She’d been writing something while Klaus had been arguing with Five. She tapped her heeled boot on the tiled stone floor and held up her hand, which she had written on.

_Is Diego ok? We should wait until he wakes up._

Klaus read it out, for Five’s benefit, who had been trying to twist his head round to read it. Klaus then replied, “He broke his leg, I think, and he’ll have a concussion. He’ll be dizzy and coo-coo - more than our little psycho here -“ he affectionately tapped a glaring Five on the shoulder, “so I don't think he’ll be up to making any big decisions.”

“He would agree with me.” Five claimed, seeming pretty confident in himself.

Klaus giggled because that was definitely never happening, “No, he won’t, you know that-”

Allison tapped her heel again and help up her hand, the same as before, except the words _we should wait_ had been underlined and circled. 

“Then we wait.” Luther said decisively. 

So they waited. Klaus went back to sitting next to Diego, still not sure if he should try re-setting the leg yet. He would need Luther’s help with it, if not to actually realign the bones - it might take a bit of strength - then to help Diego down because to would hurt like a bitch and he hadn’t seen any anaesthetic in the box. Even if he had seen some, they hadn't used anaesthetic in Vietnam and he knew that stuff was deadly if you didn’t get the exact right amount. 

He’d only helped a medic with broken bone once - when Mike had jumped into a trench head-first and landed on one hand, breaking his wrist. The bone had poked out, Klaus had almost puked, and he had left the medic’s tent. When he’d come back it was mostly done and bandaged up, he was just tasked with assembling the splint for it. The next day Mike had been sent home to heal. He never saw him again.

Just as Klaus was wondering how he was going to pull it off, and if maybe any of his other siblings remembered some of their training as kids so he wouldn't have to, Diego woke up. 

Diego let out a deep rumbling groan, lifting one hand to the back of his head. Klaus smiled toothily, trying to look comforting. Maybe he came off a little strong because he watched as Diego narrowed his eyes suspiciously and turned to scan the room, where all their other siblings except Vanya were watching him.

Five was propped up on his elbows, which Klaus would tell him off for later. Luther seemed to have found a chair and settled in next to him by the kitchen island. Allison hadn’t moved from the couch and Vanya didn’t seem to be waking up anytime soon.

Diego seemed to be coming to a realisation that they were in a pretty bad situation, because his first word was a simple one that summed it up perfectly:

“Fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to keep looking up stuff and I watched a video on how they do medical stitching, it's actually really interesting.  
> This isn't beta-ed, so please point out any grammar or formatting or spelling mistakes!  
> Any and all feedback is appreciated!


	3. i hope somehow i'll wake up young again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from False Confidence by Noah Kahan.

When Vanya woke up, the first thing she felt was warmth. This was unusual because typically when she woke up all alone in her tiny flat, she’d have to venture out into the cold to turn on her crappy electric heater. 

The next thing she felt were fingers in her hair, delicately brushing through it. This was definitely strange. 

As she felt more of her senses coming back to her, what alarmed her immediately was that she could hear out of her left ear perfectly fine despite feeling it squished onto what seemed like someone’s knees, but her right ear was silent.

This shocked her into blinking her eyes open, squinting at the light, closing them again, and finally moving to put her hand over her eyes so she they could slowly adjust. The hand in her hair stilled.

She heard something muffled, but her left ear was still faced down, so Vanya shifted to sit up. She momentarily mourned the loss of the person’s warm embrace. Then she looked up and saw who they were and before she could get a word out she burst into tears.

As soon as she met Allison’s eyes, the events of the previous - day? she didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, it felt like a while - flared up in her mind like an alarm she couldn’t snooze. She remembered being angry. So fucking angry, at her father, at Leonard or Harold or whatever his real name was, at Luther for putting her in that prison of a room, at the whole world for letting it all happen. But she was not angry at Allison. She hadn’t been since she’d seen the regret on her sister’s face before she’d even finished saying the word “rumour,” not regret because Vanya was going to hurt her, but regret because she knew she was going to hurt Vanya. 

“I’m so sorry - I’m just, I’m so sorry,” She immediately crumpled back into her sister’s arms. She couldn’t help it, she was just sobbing. Sobbing. A hand snuck around and patted her on the back, pulling her closer, and Vanya buried her face into Allison’s neck.

Absently, she registered Klaus’s voice telling the others that she’d woken up, and Luther starting to say something but then stopping, and then a small Five-sized hand joining Allison’s on her back. 

She knew it was Five because he was patting her awkwardly - he’s always found the whole ‘comforting people’ thing difficult, even though he’d had to do a lot of it when they were kids and she’d go crying to him whenever their father said something horrible. Called her ordinary. Sneered at her violin. Just generally looked in her direction with anything other than praise, which was every time he looked at her. 

Five’s room had been across from her own, right next to Allison’s and Luther’s, the odd numbers all together. So when they all had their unscheduled half hour, she would knock on his door and sit in his room while he tried to explain his fantastical theories about time travel.

After a few moments Five gave up on patting and just let his hand rest on her shoulder while she cried.

Then Allison stopped rubbing her back, and tapped her instead. Vanya slowly disentangled herself from the hug, her face soaked with tears, and looked her sister in the eyes. 

Allison looked so tired. That’s what she noticed first. Her eyes had dark purple bags and her hair was untamed in a way Vanya hadn’t seen since they were kids, before she’d adopted her glamorous lifestyle. Her makeup was smudged and - she’d been crying too. God, that made Vanya want to cry even more now, _she’d made her sister cry,_ but she choked the impulse down. Allison’s neck bore a bandage, a reminder of how rubbish of a sister Vanya was, to have hurt her so much. But Allison was… smiling?

“Allison, I-“ Vanya started to say, but was interrupted when Allison held up the back of her hand, which had written on it:

_I forgive you, Vanya._

“How can you? What I did to you…” Vanya held up a shaking hand and traced the bandage, delicately as she could, trying not to cause Allison any more pain, “I hurt you.”

“It’s not your fault.” The voice came from Vanya’s right, so she didn’t hear it very well, but when she turned she saw it was Diego. She stared at him, wide eyed, and he shrugged in response, continuing, “I’m serious, it’s not. Dad was shit. I might’ve blamed you for a while, but he’s really the person who made us all who we are and do the things we do.”

“But-“

Five interjected, “No, we have more important things to think about. Vanya, Allison’s forgiven you and so have the rest of us. We have to focus on what we do now.”

It was then that Vanya finally took in her surroundings, the lack of windows and over-use of artificial light, the strange antique decor.

“Where are we?”

“Some bunker that apparently Dad told Luther about, but none of the rest of us. We weren’t special enough, you see.” Klaus informed her, lounging in a chair next to where Diego was for some reason… sat on a table? And his leg was covered in bandages, oh god, did she do that?

“A bunker? Like, a nuclear bunker? Why?”

The others looked at each other for a moment. Vanya eyed them suspiciously, getting more anxious as each second passed, each of them glaring at each other as if they didn’t want to be the one to tell her, tell her what?

“What happened?” She ground out.

It was Five who took the job pin the end, it seemed, asking her, “Vanya, what’s the last thing you remember?” His hand was still on her shoulder.

She though back. The last few memories were all covered in this bright white light, in the same way all her childhood memories seemed bright and warmly tinged. 

“The - room, in the basement. Then the concert. Everyone ran away, and there was some sooting I think? Then, you guys were all running at me and I panicked, I can’t remember what I did but - then there was this really loud noise next to my right ear and that’s it. I can’t hear out of it.”

That made Five narrow his eyes, “You can’t hear out of your right ear?”

“Yeah,” she noted him looking concerned, but she didn’t want that because _really, she was fine,_ so she continued, “What happened, why are we in a bunker? Tell me.”

Five glanced at Allison. Vanya followed his gaze, and saw Allison nodding. Then Five turned back to her.

“Allison shot a gun right next to your ear. It seemed to overload you, and you let the rest of us go, but it made you send all that energy in the direction of the gunshot. Which was up into space. Which hit the moon.”

“The moon?”

“Yes. You have to understand, Vanya, everything that occurred was an unlucky chance. If the gun had been ever so slightly in a different direction, if you’d been stood somewhere else on earth, if it had been a different time of day, it wouldn’t have hit the moon at all. It likely would have just gone off into space, knowing how empty it is, and might not have hit anything for millions of lightyears. It was just unlucky.”

“Five, _what happened?”_

He paused. 

“The moon broke into many different pieces, which fell to the earth, and caused the apocalypse. We got into the bunker just in time to escape the blast.”

No. That’s not possible.

The weird 50s lacy lampshade in the corner rattled. Five glanced at it for a fraction of a second before looking back at Vanya intently.

“This bunker seems to have been made out of some incredibly strong metal. Luther couldn’t break it open, he tried getting us out earlier. We were also lucky since, being right under the point where the energy blasted through, the parts of the moon directly above us were the most thoroughly broken and the smallest debris. The larger areas will have landed in other places across the planet.”

He just kept talking. A box that’d been on the table next to Diego fell off, spilling packaged bandages and medical equipment across the floor.

“Not helping, Five!” Diego shouted.

“Quiet, Diego.” Five barely gave him a second glance, keeping his focus on Vanya. 

“Now, that all happened. But you know as well as I do that you couldn’t have done anything to stop it. You only just discovered you powers. You have the strength of a fully-grown adult with them, but the control of a child, since you never got to master them while they were still developing.”

“… I didn’t. You're right.” Vanya said very quietly. 

She wanted to look away, she was so ashamed, but Five wouldn’t let her. He’d always been like that. Giving her his full attention, and demanding the same in return.

“I’m always right.” He smiled smugly, and Vanya could see that same 13-year-old she remembered seeping back through for one of the first times since he’d returned to them. 

“Now, we couldn’t do anything about it this time around. But lucky for you, your brother can travel through time. We’re going to go back and fix it. Do you want to hear my plan?”

“Tell me.”

Slowly, she whole room settled down. It was only then that Vanya realised it’d been shaking in the first place. When peace returned, the room was only slightly messed up, and Klaus got to quick work putting all the supplies back in the first aid kit. 

Five sat down next to her on the sofa, and when he moved she saw past him and who he’d been standing in front of: Luther, who was lurking in the corner, watching her warily. When Five had settled comfortably he followed her gaze.

“Don’t worry about Luther. He apologises for being a dick before,” he assured her.

“Does he?” She raised her eyebrow at him.

It was Luther who replied, “I do apologise. I thought you were dangerous…”

“But…?” Five snakily led him on to his conclusion. Luther looked frustrated for a moment before returning to his composure.

“But, I was wrong. You were just scared and alone. And I’ve been there. So…” he paused, and finally lifted his gaze from the floor to look Vanya in the eyes, “I’m sorry.

There was a moment of silence.

Then Klaus started clapping.

“Space Boy has a heart after all!”

Diego chuckled, “That’s probably Allison’s fault.”

Vanya looked over at her sister, eyes wide and questioning. Allison just smiled and held her hand.

“Alright Luther, you can come out of the corner now. Everyone, take a seat and listen. Here’s the plan.” Five grinned at them all, then looked at Vanya and wordlessly held her other hand.

For the first time in a long time, holding hands with her siblings, Vanya felt warm, not just because of a crappy electric heater.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i felt like this chapter was full of clichéd lines ugh. but it's 1am and i have school tomorrow, so i'm gonna worry about it later. i hope you liked it despite that! i always like reading/writing five comforting vanya, he's so bad at emotions and stuff but he still tries his best, bless him. also luther definitely deserves to stand in the corner and sulk until he's apologised to vanya.
> 
> might update this in a couple of days, or it might not be until the weekend. we'll see! :)
> 
> this is un-betaed and i haven't had time to go through it myself yet, so please do point out any errors! all feedback appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually my first fanfic on ao3 and my first for this fandom. I've written stuff before on fanfic.net for fandoms I liked a few years ago, and I've written my fair share of original works that I haven't put online, but I was feeling really antsy and had this idea so here we are. All feedback appreciated!


End file.
